[R-sig-Debian] Error in build_htmlpkglist

[Douglas Bates]

On a machine running Debian testing and now on another machine running
Kubuntu hoary on which I tried to install the r-base-core_2.1.1-1 I
consistently get errors from the installation of the recommended
packages, such as r-cran-nlme.  This is somewhat embarrassing as
r-cran-nlme is my package :-)

The error messages are

Undefined subroutine &main::build_htmlpkglist called at
/usr/lib/R/share/perl/build-help.pl line 73.

That perl script does contain the line

use R::Rdlists;

and the file R/Rdists.pl does define build_htmlpkglist but somehow the
definition is not being found.

My perl is rather rusty and I would prefer not to debug this.  Has
anyone else encountered this problem?  Does anyone know of a fix?